More black than orange

Any evening at home between Proms and summer jaunts usually includes one episode of Orange is the New Black, Series 4. Netflix's ever-surprising drama about a women's prison is too rich for binge watching. Not only are so many characters and strands involved in each episode, but often their treatment goes so deep that you need time to digest it. So we go one at a time.

Episode 7, which we watched yesterday afternoon, seemed especially layered. Usually there's one 'back story', and this time it belonged to Lolly Whitehill, the mentally unstable character whose past was plumbed so painfully that it raised questions many must ask in America - and actually here too: how can conditions like schizophrenia and paranoia pass undiagnosed, and why should that person end up in prison without proper mental health care? Actor Lorin Petty is carrying a difficult burden here, but she executes it brilliantly, on a high wire between pathos, scariness and humour.

Interestingly the younger Lolly is played (though I'd never have guessed it) by another actress, Christina Brucato (pictured above), and though I haven't looked back to check I presume Petty has taken over by the time we see Lolly on the streets, selling coffee to willing buyers and giving some of it away. You fear something dreadful's going to happen in the prison, but scriptwriter Nick Jones settles for a quiet coda - hope this isn't too much of a spoiler - as Lolly shares a moment inside her 'time machine' with the intermittently touching, flawed inmate counsellor Sam Healey (Michael Harney). Full marks to Jones for giving her so many good and strong lines about the voices in her head.

The terror of the episode belongs to the ongoing story of initial protagonist Piper Chapman (Taylor Schelling) and the upshot of her opportunism in selecting a gang of white racists to be her bodyguard. We love the return of the terrifically sympathetic, big-eyed Nicky (Natasha Lyonne), while our favourite group including Uzo Aduba (Suzanne 'Crazy Eyes' Warren), Adrienne C Moore (Cindy) and Tasha Johnson (Danielle Brooks) are part of a semi-amusing thread involving the exposure of Marth Stewart-alike Judy King (Blair Brown) as the one-time manipulator of a tinted-tainted puppet on TV. Brown is one of the latest additions to a flawless team of actors, any one of whom could garner a special award*. And the main thing is that Orange is the New Black doesn't seem to be falling into the formulaic trap of so many American series, however well they start out. And I always found House of Cards phoney anyway... Now, how the HELL I gonna catch up on RuPaul's Drag Race?

Meanwhile, American 'real' life continues to be as scary as it is comic-grotesque. To learn the extent to which Trump is just one of many Republican fruitcakes, read this brilliant article by Eliot Weinberger in the London Review of Books**. And to plumb the seriousness of Trump's connection to Putin - much of which has yet to come properly to light - this is good (and good on Vilnius, which has every right to feel very scared about Trump's election, for the above; my thanks to Sue Scheid for drawing my attention to the report). Fine coverage, as always, on how it's playing in Russia from The Interpreter. Anything positive to shout about our side of the pond? Only the speechifying of Nicola Sturgeon, the one limelight politician who calls a spade a spade.

* 4/8 Having finished the series, I can say that the last three episodes are well up to the standard of this one. There's a heart-wrenching flashback sequence for Suzanne within a tense lock-down strand and another for the adorable Poussey (Samira Wiley).

**Postscript - and this LRB article, which I've only just discovered, is the best long read on Brexit of any I've come across.

German endings

'There is no German artist who does not become more heavy-handed over whatever he does than he ought to be,' wrote Hugo von Hofmannsthal to Richard Strauss in 1923, sounding their own joint knell on the dog's dinner that Die Aegyptische Helena turned out to be (superb first act, wretchedly convoluted second). I thought of that when I came to the end of Fassbinder's otherwise magnificent TV series Berlin Alexanderplatz. The original Heimat follows it in serving up a kind of dream-nightmare for the final episode ('The Feast of the Living and the Dead") in which the Teutonic penchant for the metaphysical is hampered by an equal tendency to the stilted and unspontaneous. I was worried, having found the first three books such easy and lyrical reading, that Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers would end up the same way. I feel it does ramble a bit in Book Four, but steers back on course so that the end truly crowns the work.

Since I last mentioned my pleasant surprise over Mann's masterpiece on the blog, I've worked my way through the valley of the shadow of death as Joseph's brothers leave him in the pit - their psychology masterfully examined -  the incredible evocations of ancient Egyptian upper class living which grace the really rather creepy story of Potiphar's wife and her very long-term infatuation with the beautiful Joseph, the lightly-handled description of a far from bad second imprisonment and the great recognition scenes when Joseph's brothers, and finally his father, come to Egypt.

To add to the superb set-pieces I noted then, there's the extraordinary chapter where Eni/Mut (Mrs Potiphar) wants her stylish lady friends to feel her pain. So she whets some little knives so sharp that, when the friends look up from peeling their fruit at the carefully-timed appearance of the stunning young man, they 'cut their fingers terribly - without being in the least aware of their gory misfortune right off, since one hardly even feels a cut from a blade sharpened to such keenness, particularly if one is as thoroughly distracted as Eni's friends were at that moment'.

It's part of a cumulative horror in which Mann affects to give understanding to a woman truly in love. Yet Mut remains creepy in her lovesickness so, like other women in the novel, she comes off badly all the same. Still, it's not bad for a 300-page extension of what in the Bible - as depicted here by Rembrandt - comes down to her decree to Joseph to 'lie with me' and his running off with her garment.

Mann's authorial voice remains quizzical and ironic, occasionally nauseatingly coy, not least in the address to the reader including the advice 'take my advice and do stick around!' when the tale seems as good as done (in the chapter 'Pharaoh Writes to Joseph'). But it also reveals more as it goes on, and it seems to me that Mann's attitude to the whole idea of Jacob and his family as 'the chosen' is finally unveiled here:

One might say that it was presumptuous and all too egotistical of Jacob to regard such a vast calamity as this ongoing drought, which afflicted so many nations and resulted in great economic upheavals, as nothing more than a measure taken to guide and advance the history of his own house - it evidently being his opinion that when it came to himself and his family the rest of the world simply had to make the best of it. But presumption and egotism are only pejorative terms applied to beneficial conduct worthy of highest commendation - a far lovelier term for it is piety. Is there a virtue that does not leave itself open in terms of censure or in which certain contradictions, such as humility and arrogance, are not inherent? Piety is the privatisation of the world as the story of one's own self and one's salvation, and without the, yes, sometimes offensive conviction that one is the object of God's special, and indeed exclusive care, without the rearrangement that places oneself and one's salvation at the centre of all things, there is no piety - that is, in fact, what defines this very powerful virtue. Its opposite is neglect of the self, its banishment to the indifferent periphery, from where no benefit to the world can come either. The man who does not think highly of himself will soon perish.

In order not to find Mann's Jacob and Joseph odious, despite the leavening of charm and sly humour in the latter's case, one has to bear that in mind. And the ending does indeed have a serenity brighter than anything that has gone before. I left the book with regrets - maybe, like Solti, I should go back to the beginning and start all over again next year. Which is not something I felt about Proust.

As for Edgar Reitz's Heimat, I can well imagine revisiting certain episodes, but not the whole. This TV saga of family life over decades in a German village, Shabbath in the Hunsrück - not at all far from where we were at Easter - has dazzling cinematography, and a sometimes enigmatic change between black and white (who could forget, for instance, the scene where one of the brothers hurls down roses from a plane over the village?)

There are plenty of sympathetic characters, above all Marita Breuer's eventual matriarch Maria Simon (pictured above) - though this beautiful actress doesn't age convincingly, visually at any rate. The thread concerning Berlin prostitute and entrepreneur Lucie (Karin Rasenack) and the simple-souled Eduard Simon (Rüdiger Weigang)  is engrossing.

 I was always waiting for them to reappear. But sadly they don't, at least not much, once World War Two is over. Instead the whole thing turns a bit queasy with the adventures of an attractive teenager, baby brother Hermann (Jorg Richter), and his relationship with a 27 year old woman. I got the sense that Reitz was longing for the young man to take his clothes off as often as possible - it's almost exploitative.

And I didn't have sufficient interest in the boy's talents as a composer to want to follow his further adventures in the next series. So few directors on stage or screen get it right in characterising creative artists.

Anyway, that particular saga is over and I've been indulging J as he worked his way through all series of The Good Wife on his few free evenings. I can see it's well acted, with astonishing guest appearances from a list of distinguished names, and sometimes complex, but slightly formulaic in the tradition of most American series. Now it's back to Orange is the New Black and series three, and I'm finding it difficult to understand what anyone is saying. Maybe it's just a question of re-adjustment.

Extraordinary women

That's three on a stage in the spooky-spectacular Union Chapel the other week, and about three times that many, all in prison. But let's start with the divas. Courtesy of the Royal Society of Literature and the unfortunately-titled but really rather good magazine Intelligent Life, we were promised The Lives of Others from great dames Harriet Walter and Hilary Mantel, moderated by a less visible genius of the theatre, playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, productions of whose classic Our Country's Good and of her translation of Gabriela Preissova's Jenufa remain among my theatrical highlights. All shots of the evening courtesy of Mike Massarow via the RSL.

It was perhaps only because I've seen Harriet in action before, rivetingly at the Garrick and - if I'm the right person to judge - achieving miracles of transformation as 'my' Marschallin, Prima Donna, Brünnhilde and Moses in the German Opera Discovery Day up in Birmingham, that the lion's share of my wonder this time goes to Hilary Mantel. In putting the spotlight on her I know I sidestep the theme of inhabiting male characters from the fictional or real past, about which Harriet was so eloquent. But our greatest and most versatile living novelist is also a consummate performer; I hesitate to use the word 'actor' because a lot of what she said seemed spontaneous, a direct response to questions or comments, whereas with Robert Macfarlane in conversation at the East Neuk Festival I found that a lot of his phrases came straight out of his books.

In any case I'm usually sniffy about attending literary events - I have the feeling, possibly unfair, that the writer's life's his/her work, to paraphrase Henry James. But here there was almost a sense of possession, as Mantel made clear in paralleling her work with that of her medium in Beyond Black (the first of her books I read). She began by saying how as she was about to begin Wolf Hall and wasn't sure how to, she heard a voice directly above her saying 'now get up', found herself 'in Thomas Cromwell's body - and then all the decisions about the novel had been made'. And she ended in response to an audience question about how much was imagination and how much 'what you know' in much the same seer's vein:

You may know more than you think, and there's a turning point where you recognise that, you gain authority...People suppose that imagination is an airy quality and that employing it is a genteel act that might be done on a chaise longue. But to imagine properly, you have to imagine strenuously, it involves your whole body, from feet to head.

That was richly embodied in what she said about the novel I found the most shattering of all, A Change of Climate, her Heart of Darkness which transports us back from Norfolk to Africa, in the writing of which she told us how the 'secret' had to be torn out of her.

My gratitude here to good friend and impressive novelist Anthony Gardner, who pointed me in the direction of his write-up in Intelligent Life as I hadn't written down the quotations I found most interesting. It came as no surprise to find he'd selected most of them. Read his article for more from Harriet.

Much later - I'm indebted to the charming folk at the RSL for notifying me when the interview went up on YouTube. It seems unembeddable, so click here for the whole thing.

And then we had to spoil it all by going off to a truly dismal late night Prom with Rufus Wainwright.

There's a parallel here between being so utterly swept off our feet by two whole series of the Netflix prison drama from Jenji Kohan Orange is the New Black that dipping diligently into several supposedly 'arthouse' gay-themed movies has been disappointing. If I could have done, I'd have walked out of Rufus - I couldn't because I had to write about it - and we've given up on the three films since the last Orange episode.

You think, perhaps, it's going to be a campy American equivalent of Prisoner of Cell Block H, but being based on a writer's prison memoir, a mostly less grim version of Dostoyevsky's autobiographical From the House of the Dead, it already has a claim to truthfulness. But then there's the extraordinary script, plotting and acting (every character a winner in one way or another). Our guide, Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), is slammed up for just over a year for having carried drug money 10 years earlier at the request of her charismatic lover Alex (low-voiced Laura Prepon, a woman I can well imagine falling for). So this is the chronicle of Piper's 'time'.

Well, if prison is as full of characters like this, give me a sentence ('you wouldn't last a week', says J scornfully, telling me unrepeatable things about why not). While it teaches you a lot about the American prison system - not least that a cancer sufferer will probably die in prison (Barbara  Rosenblat turns in a terrific performance as 'Miss Rosa')

and an old lady with Alzheimer's will be dumped out on the streets if she becomes too much bother inside - the biggest message is about the waste of talent and creativity. We all love the wit and wisdom of Sophia (Laverne Cox, a transgender actress playing a transgender prisoner). The black group hanging out together - presumably this isn't racism but just how it is - includes characters with a fabulous sense of fantasy and language (gongs, please, for Uzo Aduba, Danielle Brooks and Samira Wiley). So we (I, at least) get really upset when they nearly all come under the sway of one hard-nosed businesswoman, the evil Vee (superb actress Lorraine Toussaint).

I won't provide any spoilers by describing what Vee gets up to, but suffice it to say POSSIBLE SEMI-SPOILER ALERT  that by the penultimate episode of Series Two I was wanting to leave the show alone because it was so upsetting. But whereas Series One ended on a bout of terrifying violence, this one wound up in more of a feelgood way.

Praising the good actors would just turn in to one long list: they include the men, not least the prison counsellor (Michael J Harney) of warped good intentions and the large guard who had us in tears of laughter rapping about his humiliation in a Catholic school to a group of nuns protesting outside the prison. The one I find most consummate of all is Taryn Manning as the appalling hick Pennsatucky; how the hell does that actress keep the gravel in her voice?

She, as much as anyone else, you're allowed to feel for over the course of time. So no-one is there for cheap laughs, at least  not in the long term during which we get flashbacks to their former lives. Absolutely a case of Dostoyevsky's epigraph 'In every human, a spark of God'.